If someone told you that you could commune with the eternal, would you?
Encouraged by the possibility of knowing our future, or a chance to find meaning, maybe we would say yes.
It’s October. The air is cold. Cold enough for an extra layer but warm enough that memories hold the remnants of summer. I want to stay outside with the autumn rays tingling on my skin. Tears are streaming down my face. I stand warily on the boundary of the unknown, unsure whether to envelope myself in the umbrage of the Yew or whether to stay just were I am; in ignorance, disconnected, unaware of what is beyond.
I have been working with a wonderful woman, Charlotte, all morning. She is an apothecary; a medicine maker who is in commune with the Earth and her gifts. The wisdom seeps out of her. If I hold my breath I can feel her gifts wash over me, almost taint me with their beauty. There was magic in the air this morning. As the fire crackled in the hearth, she spoke of the universe, of soul, of connection. In the silence, the buzz was deafening. Priestesses, herbalists, scientists, nurses, psychologists, bee keepers. All gathered in a wooden hut, drinking tea from flowers and herbs lovingly gathered from the garden.
I almost didn’t come.
Sometimes the ego rises just at the moment you are going to slay it. My ego was not happy, she wanted to remind me that I was new to this. That this couldn’t possibly be for me. That I wouldn’t fit in. The tinglings of panic have been hanging over me all weekend. How could I sit amongst those so much further along in their conversations with the universe without facing the shame that I had neglected my own. But as the morning passes, I realise that we have been brought together for a reason.
All of us have a deep appreciation for the Earth and our role within it. The reverence is soul deep, a profound respect that makes human life almost seem irrelevant. All of us feel the vibration of communication under our feet, but many of us are in such awe that we are almost a rabbit in headlights. Charlotte encourages us to see that the forests, the trees, the plants, want us to communicate with them. To communicate with them is to acknowledge our connection, the cycles and life.
We have come here to learn about the Yew and it’s medicine. Conversation on spirituality flows. We learn how to commune with plants, how to elicit medicine, make hydrosols, tinctures, and more importantly we learn how to feel. Many of us are in grief. Many of us are grieving for our fathers. Is this a coincidence? It was not prerequisite to the day. It was chance. Or divine intervention.
The Yew represents death and resurrection, considered to be immortal, a portal into the eternal. Perhaps this is what called us here.
When not cut down they seem to grow forever. The one I visit on this day is over 2000 years old. If my calculations are correct this tree has seen Romans under its branches. Shaded Tudors on hot days, provided solace to those who lost family members to the plague or civil war. Just imagining all the souls that have been touched by this tree is enough to send my head in spin.
Yet it doesn’t. This is the grandfather tree.
Following Charlotte’s instructions I say hello, and ask if I can come in. There is a resounding yes. Like a heart beat. The tears fall. The veil drops.
“What is your medicine?” I ask.
Silence.
I watch the light scatter as it filters through the branches.
“What is your medicine?”
I touch the bark and place my offering in the trunk. Conkers my father collected for me on a hospital visit.
“What is your medicine?”
The wind, for the first time that day, breezes through, rustling the leaves. They are here.
I sit with back against the bark, my shoes long since gone, feet deep in the Earth. They are here.
“What do you know about death?” I ask, and we talk. Light fills me from the inside.
We chant the Yew trees name in every language we can. Eya. Eya.
The time comes to leave this beautiful tree. I remain lost for words, for hours, days afterwards. I feel I have been touched by life.
I still remain at a loss to explain the experience, but I leave you with the words of Herman Hesse. Who like many has discovered the magic of the trees.
“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte
May we all experience deep connection, may we all seek solace in the branches. May we all hear the rustle of the leaves and the sun shine through.